


A Shoulder to Lean On

by XILVerify



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Major Character Injury, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Rescue Missions, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24834874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XILVerify/pseuds/XILVerify
Summary: The Fire Lord's been kidnapped. Toph and the Gaang come to his rescue.(Originally posted Feb 28, 2013)
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Toph Beifong & Zuko
Comments: 10
Kudos: 254





	A Shoulder to Lean On

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Ignore the pain. The pain is nothing. He’s felt worse. A lot worse. This is nothing. Nothing at all.

He curls tighter around the acute ache in his chest, fighting the overwhelming urge to cough. He refuses to show more weakness than he can help. Weakness means death here, and he can’t die. Mei would kill him. Mei… He tries to conjure up an image of her face, the sweet, genuine smile she reserves for him and him alone. He holds her face in his mind’s eye as long as he can, before he loses the battle against his body and begins to cough painfully. No, stop, he must be strong. For her. For the baby…

The pain comes again, cutting off his thoughts and filling his mind with white-hot agony. Time becomes meaningless, and when he comes back to himself, he has no idea how much time as passed, or even if it’s the same day. He lies on the hard, unforgiving floor, feeling the chill from the stone seep into his sweating, trembling body. Opening his eyes would be meaningless, since it’s always as dark as a tomb in here unless _they_ come, so he keeps them shut. He doubts he could open the left one if he tried anyway.

Another round of violent coughing wracks his body, and he pulls his knees and shackled hands closer to his chest, hearing the chain connecting them to the wall scrape against the floor. He’d had a cold even before they’d brought him here, and the dank, unsanitary environment and food had only worsened it until it had turned into full-blown pneumonia. Or bronchitis. Or both. He doesn’t know. It’s not like they’d let him see a doctor so he could get a proper diagnosis.

He knows he undoubtedly has a fever by now, but he’s just so, _so_ cold. He draws his legs in tighter despite his broken femur and ribs, and tries to conserve as much body heat as he can. He wishes desperately for a fire to warm him, but when he inhales as deeply as his ribs allow and exhales, only a tiny flicker emerges from his mouth. It produces a small burst of heat, and then dissipates as quickly as it came.

He sighs wearily and tries to focus on other things besides the pain, cold, and filth. His wife. Their baby. She had been only three months pregnant when he had been taken. They had both been so happy to learn they were expecting, after almost three years of marriage. He wonders how she's holding up with him gone and a baby on the way. Well, knowing her, she’s probably tearing the world apart stone by stone to find him, or, barring that, getting the Avatar and his friends to do it for her, since it would fall to her to manage the Fire Nation in his absence.

He’s fairly confident that it’s only a matter of time before he’s found, but in what condition they’ll find him in, he can’t say. Not that he hasn’t tried to break out before himself, but the solid rock cell in the heart of a mountain they’ve got him in isn’t the most conducive prison for jailbreaks, at least for a firebender. So all he can do is wait. Wait, and try to hold onto the embers of hope still burning deep within his heart.

He must have fallen unconscious, because the next thing he knows, there’s an almighty ruckus filtering in from outside through the metal door of his cell. There’s only been this much noise twice since he’s gotten here, the first time because a lava dam had broken and was overflowing into the lower quarters, and the second because a group of slaves had rioted (the man who brings him his meals is extraordinarily chatty in filling him in on local news; he suspects the guy just likes hearing himself talk). He blearily wonders what’s going on now, when another fit of coughing seizes him and renders him deaf to the world outside for a good few minutes.

When he can hear himself think again, he’s aware of a loud banging sound on his cell door, and suddenly, the metal is pushed aside as if it’s nothing more than a curtain. A short figure ducks through and hurries to his side.

“Heya, Sparky,” Toph says breezily, kneeling down beside him, her blind eyes fixed on a point just beyond his head. “I _thought_ that was you I felt. You okay? No offense, but you don’t sound so good.” Her gruff voice belies her concern as she brushes back some of his long, tangled hair away from his bruised face.

“I’ve felt better,” he manages to rasp before he breaks into another short coughing fit.

“I believe you,” she replies, giving him a quick but thorough inspection with her hands, face becoming graver and graver as she mentally tallies his injuries.

“That bad, huh?” he says wryly.

“Well, I’m not gonna lie, it’s not good, but Katara can take care of the worst of it.” She feels for his shackles and peels them off his bloody wrists as easily as if they’re paper.

“Katara’s here, too?” he asks as she helps him into a sitting position and bends an earthen cast around his shattered leg so he can travel easier on it.

“We all are, you dummy.” Her body language and expression says she wants to punch him in the shoulder, but she thinks better of it at the last second. “When Mei sent out the word those Lava Bandits managed to nab you, well, Aang freaked out. The rest of us came along to make sure, you know, he didn’t destroy a mountain or anything.” She shrugs nonchalantly as she helps him to his feet, but the slight quiver in her voice says that Aang wasn’t the only one that had freaked out.

“Sorry for making you all worry so much.” He grits his teeth as he leans on Toph to keep his balance, trying not to burden the shorter woman too much, but his leg threatens to give out any second, and his ribs are killing him.

“Yeah, well, just don’t do it again, okay?” she replies brusquely, supporting him around his waist with one of his arms looped around her neck. “I’m glad we found you in time, though.” Her voice is softer this time, and he can feel her hand tighten around his arm as they make their way toward the door.

“So am I,” he responds fervently. A cough tickles his windpipe, but he forces it back. “How long have I been gone? How’s Mei?”

“About six weeks, and your uncle’s with her, so she’s doing alright, from what I heard. Just a little warning, though; she’s never going to let you out of her sight again once you get back.” They emerge into the dimly-lit tunnel, and he catches sight of Sokka further up the tunnel surrounded by about five Lava Bandit guards, but he’s holding his own quite well, so he doesn’t worry.

“It seemed like longer,” he murmurs, fighting back a yelp as Toph starts to move faster down the corridor.

“Sorry, Zuko,” she apologizes, not slowing her pace. “But we gotta find Sugar Queen ASAP. I think she headed down to the slave pens with Suki so we could have some backup, and Sokka and I went to find you."

“It’s fine,” he grinds out through clenched teeth, feeling unconsciousness knocking at his mind once again. He tries to fight it back, not wanting to faint in Toph’s arms, giving her a heavier burden to carry. Plus, she’d never let him hear the end of it.

“Aang went to go knock some sense into the head honchos around here,” Toph goes on. On cue, a distant rumble shakes the earth beneath them. “I’ll give you this, though; you getting yourself kidnapped made this place get found a lot faster than it probably would have. They hid it _really_ well.” A note of grudging respect is in her voice.

It’s true; the Lava Bandits have been a thorn in the Fire Nation’s collective side for years. They'd had a tentative truce with Fire Lord Ozai, providing him metal their slaves dug up for his war machines in exchange for freedom to do as they pleased on the outskirts of the nation. Which basically amounted to staging raiding parties on helpless Earth Kingdom towns and even remote Fire Nation villages.

He hadn’t stood for their despicable trade after he’d taken the throne, though, and made his intentions very clear that they would disband if they knew what was good for them. However, this only angered the bandits and as the years passed, they only grew bolder, bolstered by the trade they received from the newly formed United Republic, where a growing demand for Fire Nation metals and jewelry had sprung up. It had only been through sheer coincidence that he’d been visiting a city on the fringes of the Fire Nation when the bandits decided to stage a raid. One of them had obviously recognized him when he was helping the city defend itself, and they’d ganged up on him, taking him down through sheer numbers.

“Well, at least we’re taking care of them now,” he sighs wearily, then chokes on another coughing fit. When he’s done, he tastes blood.

“That sounded horrible,” Toph says, looking concerned. “Come to think of it, your breathing is _awfully_ raspy. You’re sick, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah,” he admits, swallowing hard. Toph mutters something foul under her breath and picks up her pace even more.

“Just hang on, Sparky,” she orders tersely. “You’ll be fine. Just fine.” Is Toph actually trying to be _comforting_? Well, stranger things had happened, he supposes.

They pass several bandits, but Toph makes short work of them, and assures him that Sokka’s guarding their rear, so they don’t have to worry about being snuck up on. “As if anyone could sneak up on me, anyway,” she adds smugly. They also pass some freed laborers, from their gaunt, starved bodies, tattered clothes, and fierce looks in their eyes. They steer clear of him and Toph, though, once they take in his battered body and see that she’ll turn them into a smear on the wall if they even think about looking at him funny. They’re more interested in getting back at their former captors, anyway.

“Sugar Queen!” Toph calls suddenly after a few more minutes of descending deeper and deeper into the depths of the mountain. He wearily raises his head to find Katara looking in their direction in surprise from where she’s tending a gash on a frail-looking teenage girl’s arm. “Help me out, here!”

Katara has the girl sit down before she hurries over to the two, helping Toph lower him to the ground, which is good, because his legs can’t hold him up anymore. “Oh my goodness, Zuko, you look terrible!” she exclaims as he coughs a few more times.

“So I've been told,” he croaks wryly.

“You did well to bring him straight to me, Toph,” Katara says, and a blessed coolness floods over his chest as she places her water-coated hands on it. “He’s in very bad shape.”

“I could have told you that,” the younger woman mutters.

  
  
“We need to get him out of this damp environment as soon as possible,” Katara bites her lip, listening to his breathing. “Do you think you can make a stretcher or something?” As if on cue, he starts coughing again, and the long walk down has sapped what little strength he had. He thinks now would be a good time to pass out.

He knows he’s in good hands, anyway.

* * *

When he comes to, cold air is rushing over his face and the stars are overhead. They’re so beautiful that they take his breath away momentarily before he realizes that the agonizing pain that’s been pretty much a constant for the past six weeks has been dulled to a manageable level.

“Go back to sleep, Sparky.” Toph’s quiet voice from beside him makes him turn his head. She leans against Appa’s saddle, staring blankly ahead at the darkness, a soft smile on her face. “Me and Suki are taking you back to see Mei. Katara healed the worst of your wounds, but you still have that awful cough, and Katara told me she’d have my head if I let you get any worse. She and Aang and Sokka stayed behind to deal with the bandits and the slaves, but they’ll be along soon, too, once the authorities arrive. So don’t worry; everything’s fine.”

Zuko lets a small smile quirk his lips before he surrenders to the siren call of sleep again. He never doubted that for a moment.

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from DeviantArt.
> 
> This takes place about 7 years or so after the end of the series, so Zuko is 24, Sokka and Suki are 23, Katara’s 22, and Toph and Aang are 20. Sokka and Suki have been married for about two years, Katara and Aang for a few months, and Mei and Zuko for about three years, and, like the fic says, are expecting. (I refuse to believe that Mei broke up with Zuko permanently. >8[ I have issues with “The Promise” comic in general, but that is my biggest one.)


End file.
